'Spade' comes from the Italian word for 'sword' dating back to the and is unrelated to a modern spade or shovel - the symbol depicts a stylized sword.

The legacy left by Tube's navvies

One was hand dug by an army of men bearing shovels and spades working deep underground in high-risk conditions. The other boasts giant machines worth millions of pounds that bore deep below modern-day London.

-- A rare early century Memento Mori gold band. The earliest known example is dated This ring is enamelled in black with a full skeleton, twin hearts for love and an hourglass, symbolic of the passage of time and the brevity of life.